Saturday salon 20/2

1. Morrison muffs his lines and Turnbull in trouble

Laura Tingle talking to Phillip Adams gave Scott Morrison 3 out of 10 for his speech to the National Press Club. We were promised vision and leadership when they turfed out Tony, now it looks like tinkering at the edges.

Morrison looked in a muddle, obsessed by bracket creep and reigning in spending, so by the end of the week Turnbull decided to go completely negative on Labor’s negative gearing plans, saying the value of the family home would be “smashed”. He was outdoing Tony Abbott.

Evidence of a direct link between Zika and birth abnormalities is yet to be proven and health researchers are questioning whether the number of cases of babies born with microcephaly has been overstated.

Microcephaly cases are hard to quantify, with different standards for head circumference used around the world.

The incidence of microcephaly:

rose from an average of 160 per year to 3,000 in 2015. But of the 1,200 cases examined by Brazil’s Ministry of Health, only 38 per cent have turned out to be microcephaly and the Zika virus was only present in one in ten of the affected babies.

There are suspicions that a toxic larvicide introduced into Brazil’s water supplies to kill off mosquito larvae may be the real culprit.

However, the WHO still think the link with Zika is strong and Zika should be held guilty until proven innocent. They reckon they’ll know fairly soon.

Not quite. Melbourne is also doing well. Both cities grew by about 3% last financial year. The rest of us are marking time or going backwards:

The Perth economy has been hit especially hard in the aftermath of the mining boom. Its growth rate slumped to just 0.3 per cent in 2014-15, the lowest mark since the recession of 1991. Brisbane’s growth rate was 0.9 per cent in the year, the third lowest on record. GDP per capita fell in regional NSW, regional Victoria, all of Queensland, regional South Australia and Perth in the last financial year.

In Sydney:

The financial services sector was Sydney’s strongest performing industry followed by media and telecommunications, construction, retail and real estate services.

Introduction to Saturday salon

Because of the way the blog currently presents posts on the home page I think it’s better to remove the introductory material to a different place. For new readers, here’s the rationale for this space.

An open thread where, at your leisure, you can discuss anything you like, well, within reason and the Comments Policy. Include here news and views, plus any notable personal experiences from the week and the weekend.

The gentleman in the image is Voltaire, who for a time graced the court of Frederick II of Prussia, known as Frederick the Great. King Fred loved to talk about the universe and everything at the end of a day’s work. He also used the salons of Berlin to get feedback in the development of public policy.

Fred would only talk in French; he regarded German as barbaric. Here we’ll use English.

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12 thoughts on “Saturday salon 20/2”

Ah yes, the dreaded Two Speed Economy that ” journalists and commentators ” were in such fear of is over.
All of that hand wringing and lament at the inequity of it all, forgotten.
Reverting back to their preferred model of TSE, being Australian S/E Corner V The rest.

There has been a whole string of Bahnisch clan meetings this week, with my sister and brother-in-law in town from Toronto possibly for the last time ever. There are five siblings in our family. We are all still here, as are our partners, which is remarkable and a blessing, with ages ranging from 67 to nudging 81.

Any way we’ve had a lovely week, but Saturday Salon will be a day late, and I’m a bit flat-footed about what’s going to appear next week.

Tomorrow for my sins I have to work in near intolerable heat, so we’ll see what happens if I survive!

Brian: That is good news. I do feel very sorry for those individuals who have been taught to scorn all familial and clan and tribal connections – how unnatural.

Even if some of you never meet face-to-face again, the memories and the stories linger on for generations so it is definitely well worth it. Don’t worry if you wish you had done this or that when you were together and had the chance, that would show that your are just plain human after all.

Jumpy, we met mostly at my younger brother’s place. They have aircon and an extension table inside that seats 10 beautifully. They have a roof full of solar panels, from which they make money selling power to the grid.

Talking in such a setting, where everyone around the table can hear everyone else, and there was usually only one conversation going on, was magic compared to the noisy dining room on the riverboat, where you can’t hear yourself think, and people sitting two away from you might as well be on another table!

Outside they have an easterly facing open deck overhung by a bougainvillea with no neighbours in earshot. A bit of magic in the ‘burbs on late summer afternoons and evenings.

As a kind of analogy, some of us (7 out of 10) do or have done a bit of singing and one of our number compiled a booklet of about a dozen songs. We have soprano, alto and bass covered, and one of my brothers can make out as a tenor if pushed. Anyway we did a bit of singing in harmony together on the boat in one of the rooms, and in my sister’s room at the Hilton in Budapest.

Yesterday we had a singing session, a bit scratchy on the way through most songs, but it was amazing how the last note always sounded good, in perfect harmony.

The week may turn out to be a last note, which lives on in the memory while we are here and remembered fondly, appreciating and accepting the experience for what it was. The next generation were there at times during the week, and the generation after that. There will be photos.

Yesterday it was just the 10 oldies, siblings and partners. On the European trip there were only 8 of us. The 10 have probably only been all together once before, and that was back in 2000, when there were also lots of others there as well.

I don’t know how Brian.
You are probably the most carbonphobic person I’ve come across and your still reliant on fossil fuels and carbon releasing manufactured things.
I don’t think it can be done any time soon.

Look around yourself right now.
How many carbon neutral produced thing can you see ?
How many petroleum based things ?

Jumpy. you are right, we don’t want decarbonisation enough. I like to think I’m a realist, which to most makes me a pessimist.

Many millions of people live just above sea level around Shanghai. Similarly Florida, the Gulph of Mexico, and the coast from North Carolina up to New York are very vulnerable. Sooner or later they’ll wake up in fright.

Climate change, sustainability, plus sundry other stuff

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